Store up an electric charge, then make sparks. Tired of electrostatic experiments that just won’t work? This experiment will produce a spark that you can feel, see, and hear. Rub a foam plate with ...

Make a simple mini-motor. A coil of wire becomes an electromagnet when current passes through it. The electromagnet interacts with a permanent magnet, causing the coil to spin. Voilà! You’ve created ...

The pneumatic tire and the chain drive, followed by the development of gears, revolutionized bicycling in the later 1800s. In the last fifteen years, there has been a revolution of sorts in the ...

A colored object may look different against different-colored backgrounds. In this investigation, you'll discover how colors seem to change when you place them against different-colored backgrounds.

Create your own personal sound system with a coat hanger and string. Create your own personal sound system with a coat hanger and a string, producing musical sounds that only you can hear Cut two ...

You’ve probably seen an ice skater spinning on the tip of one skate suddenly start to spin dramatically faster. A diver or gymnast may also suddenly flip or twist much faster. This speeded-up rotation ...

Suspend an object in the air by blowing down on it. The Bernoulli principle explains how atomizers work and why windows are sometimes sucked out of their frames as two trains rush past each other.

When we think about objects that respond to magnets, fruit usually doesn't come to mind. Watch a rare-earth magnet repel a grape and discover different kinds of magnetism. A note on magnets: Only ...

If you try shooting a basket or throwing a ball at a target, you'll probably come pretty close, even on your first try. But when you put on this special set of goggles and try to make the same shots, ...

Throw one hundred coins, remove all those that come up tails, place them in a pile, repeat—you've got yourself a hands-on model for radioactive decay. The piles graphically show the meaning of the ...

The distribution of the mass of an object determines the position of its center of gravity, its angular momentum, and your ability to balance it. Place a lump of clay about the size of your fist ...

Make waves without getting wet. With just a Slinky and your hands, model transverse wave resonances as well as longitudinal wave resonances. Learn about nodes and antinodes of motion and compression.